This Winstron phone at CES was rumored to have been running Android, but disappointingly, it was only a run-of-the-mill Linux OS.

LAS VEGAS — It's Thursday, and the traffic on the CES show floor is looking pretty sparse. I've heard a lot of grumbles amongst my comrades in the press that this was a pretty unremarkable CES when it comes to breakthrough technologies. And that's largely true. There were no tremendous surprises from Sin City in '08, which is probably why, by Thursday, most techies were more eager to get home than to cruise the convention center one last time.

In fact, the biggest surprise to me was what wasn't at the show. The biggest omission was Google's Android operating system. Android partners such as HTC and Motorola had no Google phones to announce, and no one even had a demo OS up and running. There were rumors that Winstron, a Chinese handset manufacturer, was showing off an Android phone, but was really just running a plain-old non-Android Linux OS. "Android's not ready yet," said Winstron's exasperated Pamela Pan when I visited the company's booth. Apparently, a lot of people had rushed her booth during the show, only to react with shrugs of disinterest when they discovered that the elusive OS was not going to make an appearance no matter how many buttons they pushed.

The other surprise for me was that Microsoft had no big news at the show. Intel showed that they are steaming full speed ahead on both their ultra-low-power mobility device platform known as Menlow as well as WiMAX. (A minor note of correction is necessary here: Yesterday in my column on WiMAX—and Wyclef—I mentioned that Intel will integrate WiMAX into its Centrino platform. I've since been informed by an Intel PR rep that WiMAX will, at first, be an option on WiMAX.) The stage is set for a revolution in small, wireless devices, yet Microsoft is offering no options for a slimmed-down Vista-like OS for small devices. Many manufacturers were showing cute little devices running Windows XP or CE, or Linux operating systems. My understanding is that a new version of Windows CE is scheduled for later this year, but Linux may have too great a foothold by then.

What I did see a lot of was haptics, or force-feedback technology. Both big (Motorola, LG and Samsung) and small (a Swedish company called Neonode was showing off a super-cute force feedback touchscreen phone) companies are integrating haptics into their phones. Obviously, this is the new math for touchscreen devices—cough! New iPhone, cough!

Otherwise, all the big news was related to big corporations extending their big corporate reach—Comcast is offering more movies on demand, and Hollywood decided that Blu-ray was the victor in the format war, whether you like it or not. And, of course, flat-panel manufacturers found a new standard for just how ridiculously large a TV could be—Panasonic showed off a 150-in. screen. So it's a feathery gauntlet, indeed, that's been dropped down as a challenge to Steve Jobs for MacWorld next week. I'll be there, too, with high expectations. –Glenn Derene

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